Japanese American Internment

Japanese American Exclusion and Internment

Concentration camps and other institutions of the War Relocation Authority in the western United States
Date	February 19, 1942 – March 20, 1946
Location	Parts of the Western, Midwestern and Southern United States Arizona Arkansas California Colorado Idaho Minnesota Mississippi Montana North Dakota Oregon Texas Utah Washington Wisconsin Wyoming
Prisoners	Between 110,000 and 120,000 Japanese Americans

The internment of Japanese Americans in the United States during World War II was the forced relocation and incarceration in camps in the interior of the country of between 110,000 and 120,000 people of Japanese ancestry, most of whom lived on the Pacific coast. Sixty-two percent of the internees were United States citizens. These actions were ordered by President Franklin D. Roosevelt shortly after Imperial Japan's attack on Pearl Harbor.

Japanese Americans were incarcerated based on local population concentrations and regional politics. More than 110,000 Japanese Americans in the mainland US, who mostly lived on the West Coast, were forced into interior camps. However, in Hawaii, where 150,000-plus Japanese Americans composed over one-third of the population, only 1,200 to 1,800 were interned. The internment is considered to have resulted more from racism than from any security risk posed by Japanese Americans. Those who were as little as 1/16 Japanese and orphaned infants with even "one drop of Japanese blood" were placed in internment camps.

Roosevelt authorized the deportation and incarceration with Executive Order 9066, issued on February 19, 1942, which allowed regional military commanders to designate "military areas" from which "any or all persons may be excluded". This authority was used to declare that all people of Japanese ancestry were excluded from the West Coast, including all of California and much of Oregon, Washington and Arizona, except for those in government camps. Approximately 5,000 Japanese Americans voluntarily relocated outside the exclusion zone before March 1942, while some 5,500 community leaders arrested immediately after the Pearl Harbor attack were already in custody. The majority of nearly 130,000 Japanese Americans on the U.S. mainland were forcibly relocated from their West Coast homes during the spring of 1942.